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On The Edge Films

Issue Two

Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes

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Message From The Editor

Artist Profile: Jack Evans

The preceding Apes films influenced me hugely during this work. The characters the Apes hold always seem in a strange twilight zone between man and animal. You could say a place where savagery and intellect meet, but it almost seems more different than that as well. I also reference the Second World War a lot, I spent a lot of time studying images of a Blitzed London. This really helped me solidify the look I was going for. I wanted any city-scapes to seem cold and deserted. Like London, recovering from something World chang-ing. A civilization in ruins is a strange thing, especially if some of the buildings remain un-damaged. I really don’t know if the Apes would keep all or even some of our structures or go for an all natural, tree based existence much like they do in the wild. Like the early days of a revolution would they focus on destroying the symbols of the past? I find myself repeatedly inspired by the works of the Renaissance, the works of Rembrandt and Caravaggio always make a huge impact. Ukiyo-e and Lowbrow art again always find their way in somehow. To name a few artists Alphonse Mucha, Josep Tapiro, John Kenn Mortensen, Greg Simkins, Gustav Dore and Mark Ryden. I love reading, and films have always been influential. There’s just to much to list.

To celebrate the release of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes last month we thought we’d focus our second issue on the Planet of the Apes franchise. In this issue you will find a small condensed history of the franchise from it’s 1960’s origins to it’s 21st Century revival.

As always you will find articles from an array of our writers in this issue, each one being highly individual and informative. Our main aim with this issue and all of our work is to provide up and coming film writers with a platform for their writ-ing.

Our Ape obsession has only just begun however, keep an eye out on all our social media platforms for a potential interactive screening in the near future of a yet undecided movie.

Until then, get stuck into the monkey business we’ve so happily compiled for you here…

-Josh Senior

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“Chimpan-A”

Planet of the Apes (1968)

By Benjamin Halford

To modern viewers, the original Planet of the Apes could potentially conjure up images of men in monkey suits, or the episode of The Simpsons that sees Troy McClure star in a musical parody of the film, hating every ape he sees (from chim-pan-a to chimpanzee). But returning to Planet of the Apes proves that it is, in fact, a very sophisticated creature with intelligence and social conscience that is rarely matched in science-fiction cinema. Much of that intelligence originates with the film's screenwriters, Rod Serling and Michael Wilson. Wilson is best known for his screenplay adaptation of Pierre Boulle's novel The Bridge over the River Kwai, while Serling is remembered as the creator of perhaps the finest science-fiction TV show of all time, The Twilight Zone. A perfect combination, then: Planet Of The Apes is a Boulle adaptation that plays exactly like a Twilight Zone episode. George Taylor (Charlton Heston) is part of a team of astronauts who find them-selves on a barren planet. Shortly after finding mute and unintelligent human-like life, the astronauts are all killed or captured by highly-evolved, talking apes. Taylor, temporarily speechless from an injury, becomes a subject of interest for ape scientist Zira (Kim Hunter) when she begins to suspect Taylor may be far more evolved than her superiors have led her to believe. A progressive film by the standards of its day, many have drawn a parallel between its narrative theme of societal integration to the then-topical civil rights movement, while the film’s climax delivers an infamous and blatant message opposing nuclear weapons. The film was also undoubtedly informed to some extent by the Scopes Monkey Trial, a court case that pioneered the teaching of evolution in American schools. But many of these contemporaneous socio-political themes retain resonance even for modern audiences; its discourse on evolution in particular remains relevant to the on-going debate regarding creationism and the separation of church and state. But aside from the film's political preoccupations, how does the film hold up? In truth, the film’s make-up design doesn't compare well to modern techniques and the apes’ American accents (and British in the case of Maurice Evans and Roddy McDowall) are jarringly unconvincing. Still, the humanisation of the apes is enjoya-ble and the film makes time for comic relief, parodying our own culture with ape equivalences. While Planet of the Apes could be dismissed as old-fashioned these days, this film is evidence of just why you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. As the Apes legacy continues to grow and grow, this 60s classic of science-fiction cinema continues to prove intellectually provocative even today.

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“Going Underground”

Beneath The Planet Of The Apes

By Zak Gibson

The first thing that came to my mind when watching this film was “This is a rushed job.” After checking some facts, my suspicions were in fact correct. At the time Be-neath the Planet of the Apes was made, 20th Century Fox were going bankrupt, and due to the success of the first Planet of the Apes (1968), Fox felt like they need-ed to cash in on a sequel. Instead of waiting until they were back at their best, they decided to release this train wreck. There are various political allegories that are meant to be shown in this film, but they end up not being allegories at all. The metaphor for Anti-war protestors? Apes protesting war. Racial metaphors? Example of Apes being racist. For the most part of the movie, the audience feel like the characters being thought controlled themselves; deaf, and with sore heads. This is partly down to the fact that white noise is used in place of actual dialogue, but also partly down to how confus-ing the film as a whole is. The film goes for long periods of time without actually revealing anything, this is down to the fact that one of the main characters being unable to speak, a clever ploy by the director to help cut down the script. It mostly follows Brent (James Franciscus) and Nova (Linda Harrison) escaping the clutches of the evil apes, who want to imprison them. They then encounter the underground city, in which, the intelligent, humans lurk. Plot Twist: Turns out they are mutants; just wearing masks to look like humans (go figure). The most bizarre thing about them is the how they worship a “Doomsday Device”, and treat it like god, singing, and even praying to it (complete with the “Amens” after every sentence). In order to give Charlton Heston (Taylor) more face time, Brent is thrown into a jail cell with him. They proceed to have a mind con-trolled fight (honestly the most entertaining part), before they are able to escape they evil clutches, and work together to prevent the device from going off. However, when they finally make it to the device, Apes have already stormed the place, and now the battle switches from Mutants vs Apes, to Humans vs Apes. Of course in their effort to put an end to this dreadful sequel, they seek to put an end to anything else that could come from the series. So Taylor, with his dying words, “You Bloody Bastard”, sets off the doomsday device, ending any hope for another great adventure in this series (or so we thought), and humanity, or what’s left of it, is gone forever. This sequel could have been so much more, and actually entertaining. But their decision to quickly rake in some cash is evident in the film’s poor script, regurgitated story, and poorly thought out direction on a whole. No wonder 20th Century Fox didn’t put their logo on this film.

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“Lost in Time”

Escape From The Planet Of The Apes (1971)

By Nathan Scatcherd

Following the destruction of Earth at the climax of Beneath the Planet of the Apes, Escape immediately has a lot of self-justifying to do. Conceived as little more than a cash-grabbing attempt at prolonging the Apes franchise, the film anchors itself on a hastily-explained time travel plot device. This allows for the return of Cornelius and Zira from the previous instalments, along with new ape character, Dr. Milo, who exists purely for expositional purposes.

Sent back to Los Angeles, 1973, (a couple of thousand years before the ape upris-ing) Cornelius and Zira quickly become celebrities to the amazed human public who have no idea of the potential future war and enslavement that awaits. They find friends in a couple of doctors who act as the token ‘friendly humans’, yet sceptical Dr. Otto Hasslein does not trust them, and hatches a plan to find out just where these talking apes have appeared from… and whether or not they pose any threat to humanity.

The film is a bizarre creation; frequently funny (never in the way the script in-tends, with its scenes of attempted witty humour falling awkwardly flat, and therefore becoming funny in an entirely different way), with wooden perfor-mances all round and half-baked plotting. To its credit, it attempts to make some political points about animal cruelty and government intervention, but the dialogue is so heavy-handed that any power these messages might have carried is unfairly lost.

Considering the finality of Beneath the Planet of the Apes, watching Escape feels like watching a quickly-constructed stopgap between films, rather than a film in its own right; a ninety minute explanation of why the events of the previous film do not really count anymore, and how the timeline could pan out from here on in. Although, of course, the franchise is still called Planet of the Apes and the eventual fate of Earth is a foregone conclusion.

Escape from the Planet of the Apes stinks of a series attempting to artificially extend its lifespan, with the acting and editing providing occasional moments of absurd amusement, but the final product simply feels devoid of much purpose beyond lining the pockets of studio executives. It finds some urgency for its final couple of scenes, which are genuinely bleak and leave the film on a distinctly downbeat, ominous note, but overall it is a dull slog.

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“By the Only Means Left to Us - Revolution”

Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972)

Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972) is the most violent, nihilistically bleak film to emerge from the original Planet of the Apes series – at least when viewed as it was originally edited. Sadly, Conquest fell foul of the censors after test screenings opined that it was a little ‘too much’ for family audiences. In order to appease the MPAA, much of the violence was cut and the original ending was changed. Luckily, the extended version is available to watch in its original, dark-er form on the film’s Blu-ray disc, albeit without its brutal pre-credit opening sequence which was rumoured to show a bruised and battered ape gunned down by police – a scene shot but never released. At the start of Conquest, set in early-90s America, domestic cats and dogs have been wiped out by a virus. Apes become the pet of choice until mankind discov-ers that apes are easy to train and they become society’s slaves. Tired of man’s mistreatment of his kind, the highly evolved ape, Caesar, instigates a revolution. Conquest differs to its predecessors in that it is much darker, not just in tone but in its mise-en-scène. The human’s costumes are uniformly black, while much of the film takes place at night; a nightmarish atmosphere to signal the end of mankind. What raises Conquest above the level of a cash-in sequel is its confrontational subject matter. The themes of slavery, discrimination and revolution combine to create a powerful allegory for racial conflicts raging in 1970s America. Far from being a mindless action film, Conquest is expert science-fiction which explores some difficult questions surrounding issues of race. Throughout the film, clear links are made between the ape slaves and black slavery. Like black slaves, apes are imported to America and sold into a life of servitude to be mistreated and punished when they don’t obey, while Caesar’s underground resistance and vio-lent methods of revolutionary, guerrilla warfare parallel that of the infamous Black Panther Party.

Conquest is also notable for its shocking final act. Once Caesar’s revolution be-gins, the level of violence escalates to truly disturbing levels. The apes capture the leader of their oppressors and Caesar shows no mercy, ordering his apes to beat him to death. The film does not, however, present this act as a triumphant victo-ry but as a brutal crime. Here is where the film’s message becomes clear: an eye for an eye makes the world go blind and constructs nothing but a world built on hate and fear. Conquest is, then, expertly crafted entertainment and a great deal more: challenging, powerful and culturally important.

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“In the beginning God created beast and man”

Battle For The Planet Of The Apes

By Liam Hathaway

In 1973, Charlton Heston’s involvement with the Planet of the Apes franchise was nothing more than a distant memory; he was now the protagonist of a different dys-topian yarn with Soylent Green (1973) where he would gasp another legendary last-minute one-liner, later to be synonymous with science-fiction cinema. Elsewhere in 1973, the fifth and final Apes movie had dawned on the cinema-going civilization (or at least the ones who still cared enough to go and see it). Its title: Battle for the Planet of the Apes.

After the revolution at the end of the fourth instalment (Conquest), the now-pacifist ape Caesar has established a community away from the chaos of the war-torn world, where he hopes apes and humans can learn to coexist peacefully. However, a bellig-erent division of gorillas want to overthrow Caesar’s laws and make humans their slaves. Meanwhile, Caesar leads a small mission into the radioactive Forbidden City which aggravates the remaining irradiated, trigger-happy Mad Max-esque survivors who wage war on Caesar’s community for trespassing.

For the most part, Battle is an enjoyable final entry in the franchise that never seems to feel dull, even if it is clearly the weakest of the original films. Roddy McDowall and Austin Stoker (later of Assault on Precinct 13 fame) give spirited performances, Leon-ard Rosenman’s score is almost as invigorating as Goldsmith’s, and the film cuts to the chase when action is required to shake up any stagnant moments. But, the main problem is that Battle is a classic example of dragging a franchise on just one instal-ment too long, merely to make the last of the profits that the franchise can muster.

Caesar’s pointless mission to the Forbidden City reflects how forced the film actually feels. The only reason for him to go is to inadvertently cause a conflict that will occupy another hour of prophetic monkey business, and culminate with a highly conflicted conclusion which seems to advocate both violence and peace as a means for harmo-ny. Also, the allegories that are made this time out regarding racial harmony and violence begetting violence are so preachy that it is almost laughable in places. Parts of dialogue struggle to be heard clearly through the masks and make-up and, alt-hough some exterior sets look plainly like they are made from fibreglass, it must be said that there are some neat matte paintings of the Forbidden City courtesy of Mat-thew J. Yuricich.

Battle may be a highly flawed film in several respects, but it certainly does not cause any major lasting damage to this classic sci-fi saga.

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“2001: A Space Tragedy”

Tim Burton’s Planet Of The Apes (2001)

By Zak Gibson

“Get your stinking hands off me, you damn dirty human!” This line from the movie applies to anyone who is thinking of buying the Blu-Ray. Stay well away from this film. I would like a hit of whatever Tim Burton was smoking when he decided to release this film, as it must have been strong enough to make him think it was worth it. It starts off in a mobile space station, filled with apes. Why? It is never fully explained and leaves many scratching their heads. Suddenly a electromagnetic storm comes, and Mark Wahlberg goes off to bring back his favourite ape. Then somehow he’s thrown through time, (I wish I could go through time, back to a point before I watched this movie), into the future, and lands on a planet inhabited by humans and apes alike. However the apes rule the planet, and the humans are slaves. Wahlberg is met with overacting apes. Never thought I would say that the apes would overact, but they are very guilty of doing so. Exaggerated jokes, that fall flat, as well as exaggerated emotions in general, really put me off the film from the beginning. Begrudgingly I continued to watch. Wahlberg is jailed, gets to escape using his human “intelligence”, and takes a lot of people with him. Then a whole lot of nothing hap-pens, literally. Plot that is not needed is what makes up the bulk of the film. A group of apes and humans following Wahlberg’s tracking device back to the ship he came from. Then we’re back there, finding out it has crash landed on this planet, allowing the apes to escape their cages, make a new population of their species, somehow learn about religion (the apes say grace before dinner, go figure), and are able to mysteriously find horses, and learn to ride them. Cue Wahlberg’s overacting of a sense of sadness that it was his fault they crashed, because he abandoned ship, and they went looking for him in a low-visibility storm. Next there is a very PG battle between apes and humans, which is cut short due to the arrival of Wahlberg’s favourite simian, Pericles. Again how? Has he been circling in his pod for 3000 years, or was he too thrown through time? Something that is left unan-swered, along with many other things. Cue cliché ending where Wahlberg has to return home. But twist! The Washington steps he crash lands on, has an ape instead of Abe Lincoln sitting on the chair, and Wahlberg is then surrounded by police-apes (is that politically correct?) and we realise that the apes have inhabited planet earth as we know it. This ending has obviously tried to pave the way for a sequel. (Un)Fortunately, it never came.

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“A Franchise Reborn - Caesar is Home”

Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes (2011)

By Liam Ball

The franchise reboot is an increasingly common practice in Hollywood; we are fourteen years into the century and Planet of the Apes has already been revived twice. While the 2001 version was a tad dull and more than a bit idiotic, Rise of the Planet of the Apes sees profiteering revivalists taking a different route. By starting with the genesis of the ape mutiny, it leans closer to the story of Con-quest of the Planet of the Apes than the 1968 original, thus giving it a fresher approach than Tim Burton’s Apes. They also tried another tactic; making a good film.

Whereas in Conquest, Caesar could talk and demonstrate human traits from the outset, here those attributes are part of the narrative. Rise’s key drive comes from watching Caesar develop from just another chimpanzee, to a leader strong enough to match his name. The climactic moment where he defies a brutal hu-man oppressor with a resounding “NO”, shocking his surroundings into stunned silence, is so rewarding because we have followed Caesar as he has found his place in the world, above and beyond the status of a regular chimp.

Rise succeeds because it executes key moments well enough to engender strong emotional attachments to the main characters, even if it does flop slightly with its cartoonish villains. Like Conquest, Rise spends the majority of its time illustrating the apes as surprisingly intricate beings, and as characters they are much more detailed than animals tend to be in films (and indeed, more detailed than any character tends to be in blockbusters).

This is enhanced by making them more ape-like through the unusually powerful CGI, as opposed to just using actors in ape suits, like prior instalments. The power of the original films came from the fact that it was not humans versus monsters or aliens, but rather animals that we were familiar with, anthropomorphised but not beyond the point of reason (okay, Darwin’s point of reason). Making the apes more realistic greatly strengthens the film’s emotional core.

That Rise manages to improve on this aspect spells good news for Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, as it already has a reasonably effective basis from which to springboard. Granted, Rise does have its problems, glaring plot-holes and James Franco, but on the whole, it seems to point towards a promising future for this latest revival of the series.

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“Home. Family. Future”

Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes

By Josh Senior

Deep within the bowels of a post-apocalyptic San Francisco what little that re-mains of the human race has begun to feel the cold of winter edging in. Fuel is at a low and little power remains to sustain life in the long term. The only hope for human survival is to resurrect an old Hydro- Electric dam to reignite the cities power supply. High above the city in the Muir Woods Caesar (Andy Serkis) and his now expanded society of Apes, Gorillas and Orang-utans have constructed a fragile utopia amongst the trees. They speak to each other, they have installed democracy and they love but they are still learning the pitfalls of evolution as human desires such as hatred, greed and lust begin to take hold. Ten years after the Battle on The Golden Gate Bridge in Rise of the Planet of the Apes human beings have all but been exterminated by a Simian Flu that then led to Nuclear War. The Apes have thrived establishing a fledgling nation as they begin to build on their unnatural accelerated evolution.

The embers have begun to smoulder. Home it seems, for both sides, is balanced on a knife edge. The events of this sequel are sparked into life by a chance en-counter as a small band of humans led by activist Malcolm (Jason Clarke) ven-ture into Ape territory in a last ditch bid to save their home from falling to chaos. Thus begins an uneasy relationship as Caesar attempts to lead by example to protect his family, he assists the humans and does not attack them. Neither side wants war but on both sides there are instigators that disagree with their leader’s ambitions of peace. Dreyfus (Gary Oldman) begins to build a stock pile of weap-ons and ammunition for an assault on the Apes whilst the sinister Bonobo Koba (Tony Kebbell) plots mutiny against his ruler.

Family is the overarching framework that director Matt Reeves (Cloverfield, Let Me In) uses here to show how the divide between Human and Ape is very slim. Although aesthetically they are stark opposites on a base level both societies are operating on the same beliefs. Neither wants to be eliminated but both are will-ing to pay the ultimate price for survival. Caesar and Malcolm are mirror images, both strong leaders with honest intentions who have young families to protect. It’s almost inevitable that conflict will at some point start, the film relies upon this for dramatic purposes but the build in tensions is superbly executed here.

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Reeves doesn’t bow to audience desires either and simply give us evil Apes attack-ing Humans. There are evils on both sides but the beauty of this film as a summer blockbuster is that it’s hard to point the finger of blame at any one individual. Dreyfus is doing what any person would do and protecting himself when he is threatened. Koba has been mistreated by humans his entire life, as Caesar states late in the film “Koba only learnt hate from humans”.

The film is beautifully assembled with Reeves’ use of innovative Motion Capture making the Apes we see on screen become ever more believable throughout the run time. We also for the vast majority focus on the Apes rather than the Humans. We see the way they interact and how their actions become ever more human as events unfold. It’s a refreshing take on the dystopian tale of humanity failing to survive its own innovations. The flu that wiped out the world’s population was designed in a lab and Koba, an experiment, takes his place as presider of a kind of hell-on-earth as he makes a play for power.

Andy Serkis has also never been better in a Motion Capture suit, this performance, along with his King- Kong really establishes him as King of the Apes and is what drives the film forward when a weaker actor would have caused the whole cha-rade to fail.

The future of this franchise is bright, as the sun rises at the film’s end we can see a narrative having firmly retraced some of its old steps that now has the chance to venture onto new ground. If Rise was a remake of Conquest and Dawn a remake of Battle then the next instalment will be an altogether new affair narrative- wise. What Reeves, or whoever may takeover, will need to do with the next instalment is join the dots to the story we all know and love. At some point Caesar will rule the world but along the way the intelligent plotting first started by Rupert Wyatt and then carried over by Matt Reeves must be adhered to. Caesar is not the vil-lain, he is our creation. If this future vision of earth is truly going to become The Planet of the Apes it must be done in a way that carries on the intriguing and complex nature that this series of films has been built upon.

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